Apple Machines with an OpenFirmware revision less than 3, such as the Beige
G3s, PCI PowerMacs and PCI PowerBooks. PCI based Apple Clones should also
be supported.

Genesi's Pegasos

Pegasos I/II, Open Desktop Workstation

IBM

RS/6000, iSeries, pSeries

Memory

At least 64 MB

Diskspace

1.5 GB (excluding swap space)

Swap space

At least 256 MB

Be sure to read the Gentoo PPC FAQ
for help with some common installation related issues or if you're unsure as to
just what's in that PowerPC machine you've got sitting on your desk right now.

The Gentoo Universal Installation CDIntroduction

Gentoo Linux can be installed using a stage3 tarball file.
Such a tarball is an archive that contains a minimal environment from
which you can succesfully install Gentoo Linux onto your system.

Installations using a stage1 or stage2 tarball file are not documented in the
Gentoo Handbook - please read the Gentoo
FAQ on these matters.

Gentoo Universal Installation CD

An Installation CD is a bootable medium which contains a self-sustained Gentoo
environment. It allows you to boot Linux from the CD. During the boot process
your hardware is detected and the appropriate drivers are loaded. The Gentoo
Installation CDs are maintained by Gentoo developers.

There currently are two Installation CDs available:

The Universal Installation CD contains everything you need to install
Gentoo. It provides stage3 files for common architectures, source code
for the extra applications you need to choose from and, of course, the
installation instructions for your architecture.

The Minimal Installation CD contains only a minimal environment that allows
you to boot up and configure your network so you can connect to the
Internet. It does not contain any additional files and cannot be used
during the current installation approach.

Gentoo also provides a Package CD. This is not an Installation CD but an
additional resource that you can exploit during the installation of your Gentoo
system. It contains prebuilt packages (also known as the GRP set) that allow
you to easily and quickly install additional applications (such as
OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, ...) immediately after the Gentoo installation and
right before you update your Portage tree.

You can download the Universal Installation CD (and, if you want to, the
Packages CD as well) from one of our mirrors. The Installation CDs are located
in the releases/ppc/2006.1/ppc32/installcd directory;
the Package CDs are located in the
releases/ppc/2006.1/ppc32/packagecd directory.

Inside those directories you'll find ISO-files. Those are full CD images which
you can write on a CD-R.

After downloading the file, you can verify its integrity to see if it is
corrupted or not:

You can check its MD5 checksum and compare it with the MD5 checksum we
provide (for instance with the md5sum tool under Linux/Unix or
md5sum for Windows).
Verifying MD5 checksums with Mac OS X is described in the Gentoo PPC FAQ.

You can verify the cryptographic signature that we provide. You need to
obtain the public key we use (0x17072058) before you proceed though.

To fetch our public key using the GnuPG application, run the following command:

$ gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys 0x17072058

Now verify the signature:

$ gpg --verify <signature file> <downloaded iso>

To burn the downloaded ISO(s), you have to select raw-burning. How you
do this is highly program-dependent. We will discuss cdrecord and
K3B here; more information can be found in our Gentoo FAQ.

On NewWorld machines place the Installation CD in the CD-ROM and reboot the
system. When the system-start-bell sounds, simply hold down the 'C' until the
CD loads.

After the Installation CD loaded, you will be greeted by a friendly welcome
message and a boot: prompt at the bottom of the screen.

We provide one generic kernel, apple. This kernel is built with support
for multiple CPUs, but it will boot on single processor machines as well.

You can tweak some kernel options at this prompt. The following table lists
some of the available boot options you can add:

Boot Option

Description

video
This option takes one of the following vendor-specific tags:
nvidiafb, radeonfb, rivafb, atyfb,
aty128 or ofonly. You can follow this tag with the resolution
refresh rate and color depth you want to use. For instance,
video=radeonfb:1280x1024@75-32 will select the ATI Radeon frame buffer
at a resolution of 1280x1024 with a refresh rate of 75Hz and a color depth of
32 bits. If you are uncertain what to choose, and the default doesn't work,
video=ofonly will most certainly work.

nol3
Disables level 3 cache on some PowerBooks (needed for at least the 17")

dofirewire
Enables support for IEEE1394 (FireWire) devices, like external harddisks.

dopcmcia
If you want to use PCMCIA devices during your installation (like PCMCIA
network cards) you have to enable this option.

To use the above options, at the boot: prompt, type apple followed
by the desired option. In the example below, we'll force the kernel to use the
OpenFirmware framebuffer instead of the device specific driver.

boot: apple video=ofonly

If you don't need to add any options, just hit enter at this prompt, and a
complete Gentoo Linux environment will be loaded from the CD. Continue with
And When You're Booted....

Alternative: Booting the Installation CD on a Pegasos

On the Pegasos simply insert the CD and at the SmartFirmware boot-prompt type
boot cd /boot/menu. This will open a small bootmenu where you can choose
between several preconfigured video configs. If you need any special boot
options you can append them to the command-line just like with Yaboot above.
For example: boot cd /boot/pegasos video=radeonfb:1280x1024@75 mem=256M.
The default kernel options (in case something goes wrong and you need it) are
preconfigured with console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 init=/linuxrc
looptype=squashfs loop=/image.squashfs cdroot root=/dev/ram0.

Alternative: Booting the Installation CD with BootX

If you have an OldWorld Mac the bootable portion of the livecd can't be used.
The most simple solution is to use MacOS 9 or earlier to bootstrap into a Linux
environment with a tool called BootX.

First, download BootX
and unpack the archive. Copy the the BootX Extension from the unpacked
archive into Extensions Folder and the BootX App Control Panel into
Control Panels, both of which are located in your MacOS System Folder.
Next, create a folder called "Linux Kernels" in your System folder and copy the
apple kernel from the CD to this folder. Finally, copy apple.igz
from the Installation CD boot folder into the MacOS
System Folder.

To prepare BootX, start the BootX App Control Panel. First select the Options
dialog and check Use Specified RAM Disk and select apple.igz from
your System Folder. Continue back to the initial screen and ensure that the
ramdisk size is at least 32000. Finally, set the kernel arguments as
shown below:

The kernel parameters in the yaboot section above are also applicable here. You
can append any of those options to the kernel arguments above.

Check once more to make sure the settings are correct and then save the
configuration. This saves typing just in case it doesn't boot or something is
missing. Press the Linux button at the top of the window. If everything goes
correctly, it should boot into the Installation CD. Continue with
And When You're Booted...

And When You're Booted...

You will be greeted by a root ("#") prompt on the current console. You can also
switch to other consoles by pressing Alt-F2, Alt-F3 and Alt-F4. Get
back to the one you started on by pressing Alt-F1. Due to the keyboard layout,
you may need to press Alt-fn-Fx on Apple machines.

If you are installing Gentoo on a system with a non-US keyboard, use
loadkeys to load the keymap for your keyboard. To list the available
keymaps, execute ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386. On NewWorld machines or the
Pegasos do not use the keymaps in ppc or mac as they
are for ADB-based OldWorld machines.

(PPC uses x86 keymaps on most systems. The mac/ppc keymaps provided
on the Installation CD are ADB keymaps and unusable with the Installation CD
kernel)
# ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386

Now load the keymap of your choice:

# loadkeys be-latin1

Now continue with Extra Hardware Configuration.

Extra Hardware Configuration

When the Installation CD boots, it tries to detect all your hardware devices and
loads the appropriate kernel modules to support your hardware. In the
vast majority of cases, it does a very good job. However, in some cases, it may
not auto-load the kernel modules you need. If the PCI auto-detection missed some
of your system's hardware, you will have to load the appropriate kernel modules
manually.

In the next example we try to load the airport module. This module
supports only the old Airport cards (802.11b). Airport Extreme (802.11g) is not
supported on the InstallCD due to restrictions on firmware distribution.

# modprobe airport

On older iMacs, sometimes the network card is not detected properly. These use
the BMAC driver:

# modprobe bmac

Optional: Tweaking Hard Disk Performance

If you are an advanced user, you might want to tweak the IDE hard disk
performance using hdparm. With the -tT options you can
test the performance of your disk (execute it several times to get a
more precise impression):

# hdparm -tT /dev/hda

To tweak, you can use any of the following examples (or experiment
yourself) which use /dev/hda as disk (substitute with your
disk):

If you plan on giving other people access to your installation
environment or you want to chat using irssi without root privileges (for
security reasons), you need to create the necessary user accounts and change
the root password.

You can change your user id from root to the newly created user by using
su:

# su - john

Optional: Viewing Documentation while Installing

If you want to view the Gentoo Handbook (either from-CD or online) during the
installation, make sure you have created a user account (see Optional: User Accounts). Then press Alt-F2 to
go to a new terminal and log in.

If you want to view the documentation on the CD you can immediately run
links or even links -g for a graphical framebuffer browser to
read it:

# links /mnt/cdrom/docs/html/index.html

However, it is preferred that you use the online Gentoo Handbook as it will be
more recent than the one provided on the CD. You can view it using links
as well, but only after having completed the Configuring your Network
chapter (otherwise you won't be able to go on the Internet to view the
document):

# links http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-ppc.xml

You can go back to your original terminal by pressing Alt-F1.

Optional: Starting the SSH Daemon

If you want to allow other users to access your computer during the
Gentoo installation (perhaps because those users are going to help you
install Gentoo, or even do it for you), you need to create a user
account for them and perhaps even provide them with your root password
(only do that if you fully trust that user).

To fire up the SSH daemon, execute the following command:

# /etc/init.d/sshd start

To be able to use sshd, you first need to set up your networking. Continue with
the chapter on Configuring your Network.